The Works of Heather S.

Tag: life

I talk about mental health and self care a lot. It’s a favorite topic of mine, honestly. I tend to focus on self care, tools we can use to combat stress and anxiety, and affirmations that things do get better.

Occasionally, I’ll see a sarcastic meme about self care. Watch someone roll their eyes when they talk about ‘those crazy people’. Sometimes I’ll watch as someone gets lambasted because they shared something they were struggling with, watch as they are told they are just doing it for attention. I’ve been lucky that none of my friends have said it to me, but some folks apparently feel the need to be disrespectful to those who are suffering because they don’t understand.

Seeing that always breaks my heart.

I don’t talk about my anxiety to garner attention. (There is SO much more out there that should catch your attention. Seriously, if you haven’t noticed the world is in a bit of an uproar, I’m positive you can find something worthwhile to focus on. There is plenty for you to choose from.) No, I don’t talk about my struggles, my frustrations, because I want pity. I talk about it because I know so many people who suffer the same. I see it in my friends, I see it in society, I see it all throughout history. We all are dealing with anxiety, self defeating talk, self harm and a whole host of other mental health issues. By talking about my own struggles, by letting those who are currently living in the darkness of depression know I understand what they are going through, I can help them to feel less lonely.

Most people want to experience connection. Most folks just want to be understood.

I’ve struggled with anxiety my entire life. But it came to a head in 2014 when I started having massive anxiety attacks. These attacks would leave me in agonizing pain and sometimes resulted in blackouts. It was a seriously scary time. Knowing I was not alone was the only thing that helped me learn my coping mechanisms, it was the only thing that kept me sane. Knowing that while I suffer, I suffer with some damn fine people and that despite their suffering they were still amazing people.

That simple realization changed my perspective on a lot of things. Suffering doesn’t make you a bad person. How you react to that suffering determines that.

So yes, I talk about my brain weasels a lot. More than I am comfortable sometimes. But if it helps, if it shines a light for someone lost in darkness to give them hope… I’ll keep talking.

For those who are suffering; You are not alone, I see you, I understand.

This last week has been a trial. I fell into a well of depression and anxiety that was crippling. I am blessed my work allows me to have weeks where I can work in fits and bursts because I was so swallowed by darkness I was barely functional.

During these times I don’t do trancework, I don’t perform Seidhr. I lay my offerings at the feet of the Gods and I hold on tight.

Most marketing professionals will tell you to keep things light. People don’t want to hear about your suffering when they look at your page and to an extent I agree. There is plenty of suffering in this world, why add to it?

Because by avoiding the conversation we stigmatize it. We isolate those who suffer. By always putting forth a positive face and a smile you lie to those who need the truth.

Life is hard. There is little we can do to change that truth, but there is so much we can do to soften it. Compassion and kindness go a long way to making life an easier burden to bear. Having a community, a tribe to help you bear the burden is vital. Knowing that others have suffered as you have suffered, and survived, helps you to survive too.

I am blessed by wonderful friends who are more than happy to reflect my light back to me when I cannot see it myself. Their kindness and compassion, their stories of survival make it easier to focus on the end of the tunnel when the darkness will fall away once more and my light will shine out again. My moons. My saviors. I know I can depend on them because they know that I will do the same for them when the time comes.

I am feeling better, not perfect, but as I said, perfection is a lie.

When the darkness falls around you, may you find yourself surrounded by many moons to help light your way back home.

I don’t have to tell you life is hard. You know that. Hell, most of you are living that. I get that. I understand. That struggle is real, it holds you down, holds you hostage. You feel like you are so much better than you are achieving, or perhaps you simply yearn for a break in the clouds of oppressing circumstances. Whatever, you know the feeling I’m talking of. Life hurts sometimes.

It’s at those moments when we are at our weakest point, when our long struggle has us questioning every choice we have ever made, that the soft whispered lies that come from the darkness within begin to overwhelm us.

“I can’t do this anymore…”

“I’ll never get out of this shitty job.”

“I’ll always be alone.”

They linger far longer than any of us would like, months, years, heck, if you let it, a lifetime. It sucks.

But life is a process. We are designed to be tested.

This doesn’t lessen the pain, but instead works as a focus. It gives you something upon which to move, a way to gird yourself and walk through the pain on to something better.

This pain you feel? These trials that you face? They are not the end. They are not who you are. You are more than that. You are greater than that. You have a strength you didn’t even know you had until you look back upon your tribulations and see just how far you have come.

It is easy to listen to the lies your brain tells you. I see it in my friends from all walks of life. I see it in the climate of the United States at large. (Damn right I’m getting political, just because I don’t post about it a lot, doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions. People have been shouldering a great burden for years. This darkness has gotten pretty widespread.) But this is a process. We will push through. We just have to work through it. The birthing pains of a new life, a new job, a new outlook, a new world, they hurt, but they bring us just that much closer to something amazing.

I would like to share my experiences on surviving these birthing pains.

Stop. Take a deep breath, and center yourself. You aren’t going to do you or anyone else any good if you are overly emotional or hysterical. Fully accept that this is a test of your character. The only thing you can control is how you respond to it.

Take hold of that thing of which you can control. Your response to those things bringing you down.

Anxiety, do what you can to be kind to yourself then sit back and ride the wave. You should have tools that help you to manage it, use them. If you don’t have them, find some. Be kind to yourself, forgive yourself for using them.

Life stress, brainstorm a plan, don’t worry about the details yet. In the world you live in today, right now, where would you like to be in life, what type of person would you like to be? Be realistic but take a moment to focus in on the best idea, the one that would bring you most joy, plan out a way to get there.

Take Action! Make sure you have a toolbox of healthy coping tools, make the changes in your life that lead you towards a better existence. Even if they are baby steps they are still worth taking. Moving forward allows you that small pulse of comfort. You don’t have to be a prize fighter to win a war. So long as you are moving forward, you haven’t given up the fight. The weight you bear is heavy, but that doesn’t mean you cannot move with it on your shoulders.

Create a support group! Life was not meant to be lived alone. Find others who can help you when the darkness gets too much to bear. The load is a little lighter when carried by friends. Be careful who you trust, but don’t give up trusting all together. We are all fighting our own battle, it’s good every now and then to take a moment and sit at the fire with friends, to disengage from the war with people who understand how to refill your tanks.

Give it time! Change doesn’t happen overnight. A big change takes a while. Takes even longer when you are dealing with more than one person. There will be good days and there will be bad days. On the bad days, go back to step one. You aren’t starting over, you are confirming your intentions and as all witches know, intention is key to great spellwork.

If this advice works for you, fantastic, if it doesn’t, find a better way, share it. Promote compassion and kindness.

Did you know that make-up expires? I knew it did in that vague “it can’t last forever” sort of way, but I didn’t really have a good idea of how long it lasted beyond “a really long time.” Apparently “A really long time” is less than 15 years. Luckily, my friends love me and were horrified when I told them I was using make-up old enough to wear it’s own make-up.

Clearly, I thought to myself, I need to toss some of my older make-up. I spent a few hours tossing everything older than 5 years and realized I … haven’t bought much makeup in the last five years. My caboodle had some eye shadow, a blue eye liner, moisturizer and a few brushes left in it.

Like I said, it has been a while.

So there I was, without makeup for that off chance that I wanted to look fabulous. Plus there was a bunch of neat videos on YouTube on this fantastic thing call ‘contouring’ and man, it made the ladies look amazing. I want to look amazing too!

I have been slowly picking up pieces here and there when I felt like I could afford it. Let’s look at some of the lipsticks I have gotten recently.

Ignore my completely unmade up face and focus on those yummie lip colors. No seriously, I don’t have enough make up yet to do a full face look, so the lips are all you get.

Nyx Slip Tease

Covergirl? Sapphire

Vivid

Nyx Liquid Suede

Nyx Slip Tease

Covergirl? Pitch Black

Lipsense Blackberry with Lipsense Opal Gloss

Covergirl Outlast All-Day Color & Lip Gloss

#2 and #6 don’t have the brand on them and I got them at Walgreen with #8 so I am assuming they are the same brand. If I’m wrong, let me know, I honestly have no idea.

I am loving Nyx! It goes on well and the color is fantastic. The Covergirl(?) brand is what I am used to, less pigment, smears everywhere. It works for a brief time, but won’t have that all day hold I enjoy.

Lipsense is GREAT with hold, I couldn’t hardly get it off! It burns like hell getting it on though, so that is certainly something to be prepared for. Once it was on it felt fine and the blackberry is BLACK. I love it!

I wanted nudes too, and Covergirl’s Outlast was fantastic for that. It is similar to Lipsense in that it holds all day, but it’s not in that plastic-coating sort of way. I like it!

That should do me for lipsticks for the year. Though I am thinking one more nude, something not pink.

Storytime! – I kinda like posting these little snippets into my life because my story matters, god damn it, I am not going to let someone else write it for me.

Okay, so after the divorce I was still a Massage Therapist down in Illinois. To keep my license I had to do a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) a year. These CEUs were things like Ethics, Fascia Restrictions within Muscle Tissue and their Treatment, Energy Work, NMT training and the like. I’ve always been interested in healing people, but I took a very scientific approach to my Woo Woo healing, demanding results, instead of just accepting ‘conventional wisdom’. If I didn’t see noticeable improvement or never heard of any studies performed that proved it’s use, I simply didn’t use it.

That being said, I’ve seen some shit, so I still may go a little deeper on the mystical aspects than some are comfortable with, but everything I do is because I have some idea of what I’m talking about.

SO, I was looking into a Clinical Aromatherapy school and trying to save up when I met Mike. Needless to say, falling in love changed things. So did moving to Milwaukee and a shoulder injury that took away my ability to do massage entirely. That one shook me to my core. Here I had the perfect job for me and I lose it, completely unexpectedly. Taking classes for CEUs I no longer needed was the least of my concerns.

Things are calmer now than they were a few years ago and it’s allowed me to begin asking myself some of the big questions. Who am I? Who do I want to be? Who do I want to be remembered as? What kind of person I want to be when they tell my story? I came to the conclusion that I want to be the kind of person who helps people. It never changed. I need to help people because that is who I am. Because I recognize the individual’s struggle and I want to make their burden easier to bear.

Clinical Aromatherapy isn’t an exact science, I dig it. But I’ve gotten back into it’s study with a vengeance and there is a lot more scientific information on it than I anticipated. Hospitals in France are using it with great results and we have some really good information from their studies. It’s a supportive therapy and very gentle. Exactly the type of therapy I prefer.

I’m geeking out.

I’m making stuff again and it feels fantastic. I feel… stable. It’s such a great feeling. I may not be able to continue to work massage, but I can still help people in some small way.

That’s all I need to make me feel like I’m ‘doing something important’ with my life. Something that matters.

You have a problem? I’m going to do my best to try and fix said problem. I hate walking around an obvious solution. Either do it, or quite whining about it.

It might take me a while to figure out what a fix is, but once I get to it, I hate wasting time trying to find other solutions. Try it and if it doesn’t work THEN think of something else. Life is short and I have living to do.

That being said, I have come to realize that approach doesn’t always work. I’m nearing 40 now and I have been through enough in my life to understand black and white thinking can actually make it MORE difficult for the person I’m trying to help. Sometimes fixing things for folks is actually taking away from lessons they need to learn, not to mention the toll it puts on my shoulders when I try to fix everyone’s problems. (That’s a whole other post!)

I don’t know if it’s tough love exactly but it certainly is allowing folks to take responsibility for their own actions.

It’s hard holding safe space for someone when you have been down the road they are on. It’s hard not to want to shake them out of their daydreams to show them the end result of their wanderings. But it’s not my lesson to learn. It is theirs. If they are lucky, they will get a different result than I did and many wishes that they do!

So after several years of torturing myself, I learned to listen without comment, to hold that safe space even though I know they are just going to get hurt. If they ask my help, I will certainly give it. But they have to be willing to show they are accepting of that help.

I do so desperately want to help people, I always have, but the greatest help I can give is to allow them to live their lives as they see fit, and to be there when they need me.

Life IS short, and we must do what we can, while we can. I will not stand in the way of someone and their lessons because in order to get further on their journey they need to learn that lesson.

I struggled with that for a long time. Heck, I still struggle with that lesson when I see loved ones making bad decisions.

But in the end it is their decision to make, and I must respect that. Because, if they are truly friends, I respect them.